Posts Tagged ‘BUSINESS TIME’

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The Ubisoft versus Vivendi financial war has been surprisingly fascinating to watch, not least because it’s one of the few instances where the huge French publisher could be considered the underdog. Vivendi have been seemingly preparing for a takeover for some time, but recent developments make it look like Ubisoft might be able to stave of the potential acquisition.

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Vivendi, former parent company of Activision and Blizzard, have been trying to snaffle up fellow French firm Ubisoft for several years now, against the latter’s own wishes. That’s what they call a hostile takeover, kids. And now they’ve signalled that they’re making a move to acquire the whole kit and kaboodle this year.Read the rest of this entry »

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That is… quite a lot of money. $1.9 billion more than Disney paid for Star Wars. $3.4 billion more than Microsoft paid for Minecraft. $3.9 billion more than Facebook paid for Oculus. $5.15 billion more than EA paid for PopCap. Hell, even if you just succumb to temptation and round the $5.9 billion (or approximately £3.8 billion/€5.4 billion) Activision Blizzard just paid to acquire King.com up to $6 billion, that’s 100 million dollars you’re flinging about the place like it ain’t no thang. Quite a lot of money. And for what?

Well, for a company which makes free-to-play match-3 puzzle games that are played by a helluvalot of people on Facebook and mobile (and there are PC versions for Candy Crush Saga too, naturally).

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Hey gang! Remember those rumours that Google planned to buy Twitch for a cool billion dollars? That’s not happening. The livestreaming service has been up for sale, though. Amazon announced yesterday that, all things going well, they’ll buy Twitch for $970 million in cash money. Being owned by Amazon is good for us users, Twitch say, because they’ll have the support to do new stuff faster.

The buyout would help explain Twitch’s unpleasant changes this month. It’s wiped huge archives of old video and started muting copyrighted audio in saved videos, cutting costs and getting legal ducks in a line. Investors tend to care more about that sort of thing than users do.

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First there was the nerdly Gates, then there was the terrifying Ballmer, and now there is Satya Nadella. What will be the brand new CEO of Microsoft’s ‘thing?’ Perhaps he’ll present keynotes dressed in a lion-themed onesie. Perhaps he’ll have the Windows Vista logo branded onto his chin in order that the company never forgets its past mistakes. Perhaps he’ll cry softly throughout board meetings. Or perhaps he’ll be quietly capable and manage to set the great, barnacle-clad ship Microsoft back on course after its triple-whammy of big commercial wobbles, Windows 8, Windows Phone and the Surface RT tablet*. Perhaps he’ll suddenly make the company interested in PC games again. Or perhaps he’ll oversee some new version of Windows so misjudged that Steam OS finds it has an open goal.

Who knows? But change for a company that, outside of its consoles, has been facing an uphill battle for home computing relevancy of late, is in principle a good thing. And hey, who’da thunk it: he only scores two out of three in Middle-Aged White Guy CEO bingo. Progress of a sort!Read the rest of this entry »

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With the Western gaming industry, or at least the traditional boxed product aspect of it, currently in the doldrums (just ask Max Payne) many eyes have turned Eastwards. Huge audiences, huge development manpower, increasingly huge piles of cash, both real and potential. China especially is slowly moving into (and being moved into for) games, despite having a mainland ban of sorts on consoles, and the next major herald of its intentions comes in the news that Chinese giant Tencent has bought a “minority interest” in Jazz Jackrabbit developer, Epic.Read the rest of this entry »

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The writing appears to be on the wall for increasingly troubled UK videogame retailer GAME and its subsidiary Gamestation. Its share value has fallen dramatically to less than 1 penny, and allegedly it put itself up for sale over the weekend.Read the rest of this entry »

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There is Steam, and then there is Direct2Drive, the IGN-owned PC game download service. It perhaps doesn’t get mentioned here as often as does its esteemed rival, despite it having been on scene almost as long and having had a big old slice of the market. I guess it just doesn’t seem to reflect the strange and rapid evolution of PC gaming in quite the same way, even if its catalogue is suitably fat. Perhaps things will change as it moves into the next phase of its seven-year-old life – IGN have just sold Direct2Drive in its entirety off to someone else…Read the rest of this entry »